MAHALAXMI MILLS COMPANY LIMITED BEAWAR Vs. CHIEF COMMISSIONER STATE OF AJMER AJMER

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is a petition under Art. 226 of the Constitution.

(2.) THE petitioner is Mahalaxmi Mills Company Limited, Beawar. THE business of the company is said to be the manufacture of cotton textiles including cloth and varn and sales thereof as also sale of cotton waste. THEse articles before sale or pressed into bales so as to place them in a marketable state. This process of packing into bales is stated to be a part of the petitioner's business of manufacture and sale of textiles. It is alleged that the Beawar Municipal Committee constituted under the Ajmer Merwara Municipalities Regulations (No. VI of 1925) purported to impose a tax on all individuals, factories or institutions carrying on the trade or calling of pressing bales of cotton, wool, yarn cloth grass or other fabrics or goods by employing power of electricity, steam or water other than by manual labour at certain specified rates by notification published in the Gazette of India Part II A dated 30 November, 1946. It was alleged that this notification was not in accordance with the provisions of the Ajmer Merwari Municipalities Regulations and that the law authorising the imposition of the tax did not authorise the levying of the tax on the petitioner, an incorporated company.

(3.) IT was next contended by learned counsel for the petitioner that the pressing of bales was not any trade or calling. IT was an operation in the course of manufacture of goods and even if the company pressed goods for others into bales, it was not a trade of calling followed by the company. The argument was that the calling of pressing into bales could be said to be followed by the workman who handles the baling press and that the pressing of material into bales was not any trade.